


wanting (more than any ghost could)

by novel_concept26



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Banishing Ghosts Via Sex, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27312460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26
Summary: The Lady is beginning to wake. Jamie proposes an unorthodox method of exorcism.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 18
Kudos: 522





	wanting (more than any ghost could)

“Do you still see him?”

Dani raises her eyes from the polished brass frame she’s been trying to pretend for half an hour not to gaze into. “What?”

Jamie isn’t looking at her. Jamie is, in fact, half in their closet, fumbling to hang up an assortment of shirts that have invaded the floor over the past week. Her voice is casual, easy, a little too cheerful for the kind of day they’ve been having. 

“Do you still see Eddie?”

Something in Dani’s chest clenches at the name. She doesn’t hate hearing it anymore--Jamie’s helped with that more than even she can know, coaxing stories out of Dani over the years to turn Eddie into a memory she can bear carrying around instead of a sharp knife between her ribs--but there’s something about the way Jamie says it now. Like she’s trying to get at something Dani can’t see yet. 

“No,” she says, a bit more clipped than usual. “I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Since that night,” Jamie presses. “Yeah? Only, I figure you would have said something otherwise. If you’d seen him after that, I figure you would have mentioned it. Or done your scary-bug routine.”

Dani clenches her fists in her lap. “What are you getting at, Jamie?”

“Nothing,” Jamie says, her voice entirely too innocent. Dani clears her throat, a Teacher gesture she hasn’t had to use on actual children in years. 

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because--” At this, Jamie pokes her head back out of the closet, grinning. “You are having what the songs call a rainy sort of Monday.”

Dani makes a face at her. Fact of the matter is, every day has felt like a rainy sort of Monday for the last week or two. She’s been steady too long, she fears, easy in her skin for years more than she thought she’d be allowed. Four, five, six Christmases have come and gone--four, five, six birthdays--four, five, six years of setting tables and arranging flowers and kissing Jamie goodnight and good morning and good _I just felt like it_ along the way. 

And now, things are stirring. Changing. It’s a slow motion wake-up call, nothing so reliable as to make her stomach clench up every time she sees a reflection of blonde hair and mismatched eyes...but she’s getting there. Getting to the point of wanting to cover every mirror in the house again, getting back to that old habit of letting her eyes slide out of focus when she passes shop windows and too-clean city buses. The Lady isn’t always there, but Dani can’t guess when she’ll appear, and that’s somehow the worst bit. The not knowing. 

“Jamie,” she says. “Seriously, what are you getting at?”

“Okay.” She backs out of the closet, clicks off the light, shuts the door. “Okay, this is going to sound a bit out there.”

“Like nothing else in our life,” Dani drawls, watching Jamie move across the small room to settle beside her on the mattress. Her face is alight with something not-quite excitement, not-quite pleasure. It’s Jamie’s thinking face, Dani realizes. Jamie’s idea face. 

Usually, this is the face that results in furniture moved around the apartment for a new look, or a spur of the moment trip out of state to see the ocean, or an incredibly poor new dining experiment that will absolutely result in ordering takeout and eating on the living room floor at ten in the evening. 

“How did you get rid of him?” Jamie asks. Dani bites her lip. 

“I--”

“You never told me,” Jamie presses. “Not really. You just showed up a few days later with a cup of the worst coffee England’s ever seen and a promise that you were ready. And you were, and I’m never gonna stop being grateful for it, but you never told me what happened. How’d you go from flinching away to never seeing the specter of Ex-Boyfriends Past again?”

Dani shifts, gripping the material of her shirt in both hands. “It’s...hard to explain.”

“Can be patient,” Jamie says easily, like she’s ever anything less when it comes to things like this. She moves across the mattress in an easy prowl, settling with her knees touching Dani’s like they’re just two kids at a sleepover, ready for a spooky story. 

_Two kids at a sleepover_ , Dani thinks with a wry amusement, _except the way I feel the second her knee touches mine would never fly at a Clayton House Function. Mom would be scandalized._

“It was a weird night,” she says slowly, remembering. Her eyes flutter closed, her memory reaching out across a gulf of half a decade. Who had she been that night? Scared. Always so scared back then, but also...determined. A little drunk. Maybe more than a little. “I was thinking...I was thinking about you. About you and me, and that...”

“Kiss,” Jamie supplies, when she falters. Dani knows they’re both remembering now, how Jamie had asked if she was ready and how she’d been nodding even before she could process the question. She _was_ ready, for Jamie, and she wasn’t, for what it would mean. 

“It was a good kiss,” Dani says, smiling a little. Sloppy, and a little chaotic, their mouths slipping and missing and locating again as the wine steered the bus. She still remembers how sturdy Jamie’s jacket felt in her fists, how steady Jamie’s hands somehow were in her hair, on her back, pulling her so close she’d thought for a minute they’d be allowed something precious and sacred and _theirs_ on a night she had spent lost in darkness. 

“It was,” Jamie agrees. Her hands move across the divide between them, closing over Dani’s wrists, turning her palms upright. “And?”

“And I wanted it. That. You. And I knew if I didn’t deal with the rest of it, finally, I wasn’t going to get another chance. You looked so...” _Broken_. “Certain, when you walked away that night, that I wasn’t ready. And you were never going to push.”

Jamie makes a little humming sound, fingertip tracing Dani’s lifeline. She shivers, flexes her fingers, smiles. 

“Hard to think when you’re doing that.”

“Do it anyway,” Jamie coaxes. Dani closes her eyes again, tighter. 

“I was drunk, and I was--”

“Riled up?” Jamie suggests, laughter in her voice. Dani flips over one hand, smacks her knee lightly. 

“If you want the story, stop talking. Yes. Riled up. And angry, if I’m honest. Angry at him, and angry at myself for not being able to let him go.”

She’d been so tired, she remembers. So tired, the way a person gets when sleep is just a parade of memories best left in the dark. The way a person gets when every smile is a mask, every laugh is a reprieve, every touch of another person’s hand is electric and painful and too much to stand. 

“So, I took his glasses. And I went out to the fire. Hannah had left it...I guess, Hannah was dealing with her own stuff that night. It hadn’t occurred to me to worry. It was just me, and him, and I threw them in. I didn’t want them, you know. Tried to tell his mom that, but Judy was...” _Kind. Tried. Never quite ready to see what was right in front of her. “_ Anyway. I tossed them in, and I watched them melt, and it was the last time I ever saw him.”

“Because?”

“Because I was ready,” Dani says, a bit helplessly, feeling unmoored by the combined distance of memory and the solidness of Jamie holding her hand. She’s on the bow of a ship, she feels, shifting her weight in a search for balance, and if either the past or the present are to push just a little harder, she thinks she’ll go over the side. 

“Because you were ready,” Jamie agrees. “Not to carry that weight anymore. Because you wanted something more. Something that would make you happy. Dani...are you happy? Right now?”

It’s a bucket of ice water, and Dani sits up straighter. Her chest aches. “Yes,” she breathes. “With you, yes.”

Jamie smiles. “I’m not asking for that. Not really. I mean...are you _happy_. These last few weeks, you’ve been...I don’t want to say slipping away. I don’t want to say it, ‘cuz I know where you’ll go with a thought like that, but...”

_But I have been_ , Dani thinks. _Because I can see her, Jamie. Not all the time. But enough to not know whose face will be in the mirror each morning._

“So, I was thinking. The last time you carried something like this, it was him. And you got rid of him. Never saw him again. Banished him, some might say.” Jamie shifts a little, like she’s actually getting nervous. Dani hasn’t seen her nervous in years, not since setting a single flower on a countertop and saying, _I’ve got a problem. Or rather, we’ve got a problem, Poppins._

“Jamie--”

“So, I was thinking,” Jamie repeats. “If you could get rid of something that big, something that weighed that heavy, and you could do it because...because of...”

“You,” Dani supplies, knowing this is a step too far even for Jamie’s grinning sense of accomplishment. Knowing Jamie needs her to fill in the spaces sometimes, to remind her the way she’s always reminding Dani, that she is the most important person in Dani’s world. “Because I wanted you.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, relief flooding her face. “Yeah, me. So...why don’t we try it again?”

“Try...”

“Banishing,” Jamie says. She’s starting to lean forward, a little-kid excitement roiling up through her small frame. “Banishing the beast. You and me. You don’t have to do it on your own, Dani. You know that? We can work together.”

Dani’s mouth opens and closes. “I don’t...I let her in, Jamie. _Me_. I invited her.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says gently, “but the way I see it, you invited him, too. In a way. You felt responsible for his death, and you carried that all the way across the pond, and you let it sit like a stone on your chest for months. Until you decided not to anymore.”

“So...you’re saying you think I can just _decide_ to let her go, too?” She’s not sure she likes this conversation, where it’s headed, what it implies. Jamie shakes her head aggressively, curls flopping around her face. 

“No, no, Poppins. Listen. What I’m saying is, I think we can _make_ her let go. Together.” Jamie curls her fingers tighter around Dani’s, thumb playing reflexively across her knuckles. “Like last time. You know.”

They sit for a long stretch in silence, Dani mulling it over, Jamie just watching her with a sweet nervousness in her eyes. She looks like maybe this was the kind of idea that appears in the middle of the night, out of a dream, and when you wake up and try to pass it along to someone else, all the logic falls right out of the bottom.

“Let me...get this right,” Dani says slowly. “You think...we can banish the Lady of the Lake...from being attached to my _soul_...like last time. When we...”

“Wanted each other more than any ghost could want you,” Jamie affirms. She looks a little embarrassed, but with that solid marching-on expression Dani knows they both get when they’re determined to set something right. Her lips curl upward at the corners almost against her will, looking at Jamie with that expression on her face. 

“That is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard, Jamie.”

“Yeah,” Jamie says, rising up on her knees, hand sliding up Dani’s wrist, up her arm, cupping under her elbow as she guides Dani to hold her around the waist. “Yeah, it is. But it was silly last time, too. To think you could want me enough to let go of him.”

“I did,” Dani says, a lump rising in her throat. “God, I really did.”

“And now?” Jamie’s hand, trembling around her elbow. Jamie’s face, inches from her own. Something seems to release in Dani’s chest, something warm and spring-loaded and impossible to put back once it’s loose. 

“I...can’t think of anything I want more,” she says hoarsely, honestly, and then Jamie is kissing her and she can’t think of anything else. 

***

It is, far and away, the most insane idea they’ve ever had. More insane than America, more insane than a flower shop, more insane than putting one foot in front of the other despite knowing a clock was running down in the background. 

And it’s the best Dani has felt in weeks. 

There is a difference, she thinks, between living your life with a timer going and living your life actively trying to _stop_ that timer. She’s never considered the latter before. If she’s honest with herself, she’s been living on Jamie’s philosophy of Borrowed Time ever since leaving Bly--that life is organic, that everything which begins is doomed to end, and that the beauty is in the ending. It’s a good philosophy for parties, a good thing to _say_ to people to make yourself look enlightened and stable. 

It is ever so less enlightened, to admit to anyone over a glass of wine that she is now desperately trying to remove a ghost via sheer force of desire for her forever person. 

And, yet...

“This,” she mumbles against Jamie’s neck, “is still the most insane thing we’ve ever done.”

“The part with the ghost,” Jamie pants, “or the part where we’re performing an exorcism via sex?”

Dani raises her head, eyebrows arched. “All of it? Jamie. All of it.”

They’ve made it through the majority of a day with hands to themselves, if only because a shop you own is less likely to stay afloat if you spend the entire day groping your girlfriend behind the counter...but it’s not like Jamie has been making it _easy_ on her. She’s got this way of being exactly where Dani wants her, exactly when Dani wants her, and still holding herself just out of reach. All day, it’s been Jamie shifting past with hands on Dani’s hips, Jamie’s fingers brushing hers as they work together on an arrangement, Jamie standing just behind her, pretending she can’t feel the way the breath pulls up through Dani’s body until her heart is pounding. 

“You’re rude,” she says now, pushing Jamie harder against the back room door. “You know that about yourself, right?”

“I’ve just been doing my job,” Jamie says, mock-innocently. “Just going about my business as usual, Poppins. Really thought we’d be able to wait until we got home--you know, like _proper_ adults.”

Dani makes an undignified noise through her nose, grasping Jamie’s collar in one hand and holding her by the hip with the other. Jamie's grin is just a touch more smug than Dani feels capable of looking at without spinning apart. 

“You made this bed,” she says, and ducks her head to bite at Jamie’s earlobe. It’s a bed Jamie made three nights ago, kissing her senseless and promising the unkeepable promise: that they’ll be able to do this together, that they’ll be able to unwind the hold the Lady has on her through force of sheer combined will. It’s _insane_ to think about. It’s insane to even consider. You can’t exorcise a demon through _sex_. 

“And yet,” Jamie says in a raw voice, head thrown back, hands clutching at Dani’s shirt, “I can’t find it in myself to show proper remorse, with you doing _that_.”

Dani laughs against her skin, and it is unreal how _solid_ she feels with Jamie in her arms. There was peace in their life before, peace and passion and the kind of love that seems only to expand with the stars, but this is different. This is a feeling of being filled-in, of color spreading up through the outline of her life in layers. This is...

_Deciding to fight_ , Dani realizes, as Jamie’s mouth takes hers, Jamie’s hands sliding up under her shirt to explore. _Deciding to fight and maybe even beat her at her own game._

“If this works,” she says, the words half a moan when Jamie’s hand works open the clasp of her bra. “If this works, you’re going to be insufferable, aren’t you?”

“More attractive, you mean,” Jamie sighs. Her shirt is half-unbuttoned. Jamie’s hips are searching for contact, rocking lightly, trying to coax Dani into touching her. “Okay, hey, you started this--” “You started it,” Dani replies, “when you rubbed up against me for like two straight minutes out front.”

“I was _adjusting_ the racks.”

“Reaching around me to do it?”

“You happened to be in the way.”

They’re both laughing, kissing around the smiles, Dani holding Jamie steady to keep her from taking control. It makes Jamie crazy when she does this, she knows; they’re both of a similar mind on taking the lead, two people who spent their lives trying desperately to set their own pace in the world, and who have since learned to fall into step with one another. Jamie laughingly refers to it as “mutual big spoon energy”, how neither of them is particularly good at letting the other take the lead or fall behind. They spend much of their life walking side by side, in perfect tandem. It’s unlike anything Dani has ever been a part of before.

Which makes moments like this--grabbing Jamie’s wrists, pinning them above her head with one hand, forcing her to lean back and let Dani steer--all the more delicious. It is, in a way, the only time Dani feels entirely in control of her life. Moments like this, with Jamie making a strange little growling sound at the back of her throat, with Jamie trying to buck against the hand that is leisurely working its way down her body, feel so steady. 

“If you’re going to be a tease,” Jamie begins, and Dani kisses her hard enough to elicit a whimper. Jamie, who pretends she doesn’t love it, seems to go boneless between her body and the door. Her fingers flex above her head, her voice panting out of her when Dani slips a thigh between her legs and presses up. 

She lets Jamie shift her weight, lets her join in at a slow pace, until they’re moving more or less in perfect sync. Jamie’s head rocks back against the door, and Dani releases her hands to cup behind her skull, fingers digging into thick hair and keeping her from doing actual damage. 

She’s not thinking about ghosts or promises or anything except the rhythm they’ve set between them, riding out the pressure of Jamie against her until she’s shuddering and gasping into Jamie’s throat. She’s not thinking about ticking clocks or how much time anyone can possibly expect, not with the unbound way Jamie grips her hips and pulls, pulls, pulls her harder against Jamie’s bucking. 

“Remind me,” Jamie pants, eyes rolling back in her head as she struggles to find breath, “never to hire additional help. Having this room to ourselves is the best investment we’ve ever made.”

***

It doesn’t banish the Lady in the first week, and Dani is trying desperately not to be disappointed. It wasn’t likely--it isn’t likely to work _at all_ , she reminds herself--to get the job done right away. This isn’t the same kind of possession, not the same kind of ghost, and if there's one thing her too-real dreams have taught her about Viola Lloyd, it’s that the woman was designed stubborn. 

Still, the first time she turns around and catches a smooth-faced glimpse in the bathroom mirror, all the strength goes out of her legs. 

“What?” Jamie asks, summoned by the high-pitched intake of air Dani hadn’t realized she’d made. She’s half-dressed for a day of not much of anything, cropped shirt and underwear and a bewildered expression. Dani leans her weight against the counter, covering her eyes with one hand. 

“Nothing. Just--”

“Her?” Jamie slides into the space beside her, peering into the glass. She tries so hard, Dani thinks with a stab of frustrated gratitude. She tries so hard to see what Dani can’t look away from, and all she ever comes up with is that hard, searching look going nowhere. 

“It’s silly. It was silly to think--”

“Hey,” Jamie says, catching her with a soft grip around the shoulders. “I know you’re not giving up so easy. We’ve only been trying for a couple of days.”

Dani can’t help the shaky laugh that puffs out against Jamie’s cheek when she pulls her in for a hug. “You sound like a husband reassuring his wife that there’s still time to make a baby.”

Jamie makes a perturbed noise. “I cannot think of a less appropriate analogy for our situation than a little monster coming into our world--”

Dani smacks her chest, still laughing. “So you’re saying no kids, then?”

A very specific sort of paleness seeps into Jamie’s already-fair skin. “Wait, d’you want--’cuz we’ve never talked about--how we’d even--”

“I’m kidding,” Dani says quickly, unable to commit to the cruelty of letting this particular joke linger. Of all she’s thought about in her time with Jamie, of all the mad, wonderful ideas that have sparked off at odd hours of the night, children are not one of them. Kids are complicated at the best of times, and she loves them--loves being able to listen, and help, and teach them to be the kinds of adults the world needs--but they can’t even get _married_. Can’t even walk in public hand in hand, like she so desperately needs sometimes. Kids are so far off her radar, it’s surprising they’ve come up at all.

Jamie, for her part, looks relieved. “I love you,” she says. “So much. But thank Christ for that, because can you imagine me raising a kid?”

“Yes,” Dani says honestly, remembering in perfect tandem Jamie’s meltdown over tattered flowers and Jamie’s strong arms lifting a sleeping Flora into the air. She’d be good at it, in her own way, if it was something they both wanted--but it feels better this way. Just the two of them. Just the two of them, and...

“So she’s still in there,” Jamie says, switching subjects with obvious relief. Her finger presses very gently to the center of Dani’s forehead. “Took you by a bit of a shock, I take it.”

Dani sighs. “I just...hoped it’d be...”

“Quick and dirty?” Jamie wiggles her eyebrows. Her hands are sliding around to rest on the back of Dani’s skirt, giving a gentle squeeze that makes Dani jump. 

“It was with him,” she says, trying to keep her composure. Jamie’s eyebrows rise even higher, and she flushes. “No, I--the banishment, I mean. Just one night. That’s all it took.”

“Maybe I’m losing my touch,” Jamie muses. She leans in, brushes her mouth against the corner of Dani’s frown. “Maybe I’m just not working hard enough...”

“I don’t--think that’s--” It’s hard to think at all, hard to keep the words in her head, with Jamie kissing a slow path: cheekbone, underside of her jaw, hollow of her throat. Her back to the mirror, Dani closes her eyes. “Jamie, aren’t we going to be late for something?”

“Movies come,” Jamie says in a low, careless voice, “and movies go. We can catch a late showing...”

She’s sinking lower, one hand resting on the small of Dani’s back, nipping gently through the fabric of a thin t-shirt. Dani sighs, letting her hands drop to rest on the counter for balance as Jamie drops to her knees, kissing along her belly, her hips, teasing the skirt up and ducking her head beneath its hem. 

That they don’t even have to talk about it, Dani thinks distantly, white-knuckling the counter as Jamie moves in along her thighs with soft bites soothed instantly by hot licks. That they don’t even have to have these conversations most days, is a wonder. She can feel it in the air when Jamie’s in the mood, can read it on every line of her body when she isn’t. The _are you sure’s_ are still there, resting comfortably between them, but it’s like a dance they’ve choreographed together by now. 

She inhales as Jamie presses a kiss between her legs, as a soft tongue moves against the damp fabric of underwear she hasn’t gotten around to removing just yet, and there’s nothing in the world she wouldn’t give up to keep hold of this. Nothing in the world she wouldn’t sell, burn, barter away if it meant more days with Jamie, more of Jamie on her knees on the bathroom rug with hands cradling the backs of her thighs and soft groans vibrating up through her skin. 

She lets her head fall back, lets her hips go as Jamie eases away the last boundary between them, and just concentrates on riding higher, higher, far away from a world where memory can burn and surprises hide behind innocent reflections. When Jamie slides tongue into heat, she jerks once, twice, releases everything. 

“Maybe,” Jamie says, leaning back on her haunches and wiping the back of her hand across her lips. “Maybe that did the trick.”

Dani laughs, but can’t quite convince herself to look over her shoulder. It’s too good, too nice, too perfect letting the weakness of her knees carry her to the floor where she straddles Jamie’s hips and kisses her. No point ruining it by looking back. 

***

Days pass without a sign of the Lady, and Dani finds herself initiating contact more and more, hands searching Jamie out at all hours. Sometimes, she’ll just come up behind Jamie in the kitchen, arms around Jamie’s middle, and stay there while Jamie chops and preps and boils water. Sometimes, she’ll find Jamie reading on the couch and slide between her and the back cushions, head on Jamie’s chest, letting the slow rum-pum of her heart lull her into a daze. It’s everything with Jamie that makes the world a stable place, she thinks, every inch of Jamie’s calm nature, Jamie’s bad jokes, Jamie’s kiss on her temple as she passes on the way to the bathroom. 

When Jamie has to leave for a weekend conference, a one-person-ticket event they’d decided months ago would be best suited if the person who actually understood the ins and outs of growing plants attended, Dani feels like she’s walking through a dream. She sits on the edge of their bed, watching Jamie hold a series of nearly-identical jeans and flannel shirts up to her body and discard them onto a nearby chair. 

“You’re sure?” Jamie asks for the fiftieth time that day. “You’re sure you’re all right with me going?”

“Yes,” Dani’s mouth answers automatically. _No_ , she thinks. Every time, the same response. 

“Only, I don’t have to,” Jamie presses, looking over her shoulder. “I could call out sick--”

“It’s the best chance we have of the sale prices,” Dani says, like reading a script she’s been going over for a year. “And you said it yourself, networking is everything for a small business in its infancy...”

“That was early days,” Jamie protests, abandoning a shirt and crossing to the bed. “We’ve done all right for ourselves since, and I could...”

Dani wraps arms around her waist, leaning her face against Jamie’s shirtfront and sighing. “I’d be lying if I said I was excited about a weekend alone,” she says. Jamie’s hands rest on the back of her head, sifting through her ponytail in soft, easy strokes. It’s almost enough to lull her to sleep sitting up. 

“I’m just...what if...” Jamie stops herself short. Dani looks up, mouth twisting in a parody of a smile. 

“What if the Lady comes while you’re away?”

“I don’t like it,” Jamie says. “I don’t like risking it. You’ve seemed better lately, less...”

“Flinchy?” Dani suggests, suddenly bone-tired. “She hasn’t been sneaking up as much.”

“Right. But isn’t that because--”

“We don’t know what causes it,” Dani says, trying to convince them both with a single shot. “We don’t know if she’s been absent because of dumb luck, or because she doesn't feel like coming out to play, or because--”

“Or because it’s my bloody presence helping scare her off,” Jamie says, so fiercely, Dani reaches up to press a hand to her heart. Her face is set in perfect determination, and Dani thinks with certainty that this has ceased to be a joke in Jamie’s mind, a game to help keep Dani’s off of the fear. She believes, on some level, that she’s been doing actual good for Dani’s fight with the beast in the jungle, that it’s her hands and her mouth and her steadiness that’s kept Dani safe--safer--these past weeks. 

Dani can’t say for sure that she’s wrong, if she’s honest with herself. The Lady is still there; she can feel her, lurking, watching. But it’s getting...different. Maybe because Dani just feels better, and when her head is clear, when the sun is out, when Jamie’s hands are on her skin, it’s easy to convince herself that only children get scared of the dark. 

Maybe. Or maybe there really is something to be said about this battle of wills. Of the Lady’s need coming up against Dani’s own hungers. 

“I don’t want you to go,” she says, and is pleasantly surprised at how firm her voice is. She pulls at Jamie, guiding her down until they’re laying face to face atop the blankets. She wraps a leg around Jamie, pulls her closer, kisses her gently until the line between Jamie’s brows smooths out. 

“So, it’s settled, then,” Jamie breathes against her lips. “I’ll just ring ‘em up and--”

“I don’t want you to go,” Dani repeats, hand smoothly working the button of Jamie’s jeans open. She kisses her again, open and warm, letting her tongue curl around Jamie’s sigh, and adds, “But I’ll be all right. For two days. Two days missing you. Imagine what that’ll do...”

She likes the way Jamie folds into her, the way Jamie’s skin flushes beneath the tips of her fingers as she slides a hand down and curls gently against damp heat. She moves, fingers rubbing circles that make Jamie squirm and writhe and reach down to clasp her around the wrist. 

“You’ll go,” she says softly against Jamie’s lips, the words half-muffled and entirely unimportant, as Jamie holds her wrist and guides her deeper. “And I’ll be here. Thinking about you getting back. It’s you that keeps me grounded, Jamie, but it’s this, too. The wanting.”

Jamie makes a noise, small, like she’s trying to contain herself. Dani doesn’t think she’s even arguing anymore, not really. 

“It was like that,” she says, letting the words turn into a groan when Jamie clenches around her. “That night. It was the wanting of you. Of being with you, of being _happy_ with you. It was wanting to let it all go so I could taste this. What being happy really was.”

There’s only so much room, Jamie’s jeans too tight, but she can move enough to twist her fingers, to press her thumb down as she thrusts in, out, in. Jamie kisses her with no grace whatsoever, presses until her forehead is flush with Dani’s, sweat beading on her skin as she tips over on Dani’s command. 

“You’re sure,” Jamie says, when she’s recovered herself enough to speak. “You’re really sure?”

No, she isn’t sure. Dani hasn’t been sure of anything regarding her unwanted anchor, not since taking the Lady in that night. But she feels...something in her chest, something solid and more certain than she’s used to, nodding in agreement all the same. 

She kisses Jamie, lets Jamie take her hand and kiss each finger clean, lets Jamie roll her over and clear away the clothes and the cobwebs of worry in practiced motions. With Jamie pulling the sheets over them, she feels safer than anywhere else in the world. 

“Just come home to me,” she breathes when Jamie touches her. “Just promise you’ll always come home.”

***

Jamie, of course, keeps that promise. Jamie, for someone who doesn’t like to make many, keeps promises better than anyone Dani’s ever met. She calls when she makes it to the hotel Friday afternoon, calls again each night after the conference lets out, sits on the phone until Dani falls asleep. 

The rest of the weekend feels foggy to Dani, like someone has wrapped their apartment in a thin gray smoke. She tries to keep busy, but her attention is variable at best; a book, a puzzle, a movie can only hold her for patches of minutes at a time until she bounces to her feet and goes off in search of the next distraction.

She spends all of Saturday on old habits, keeping her head resolutely turned away from the mirror whenever she needs the bathroom, refusing to give the Lady the satisfaction of a glance. 

Sunday, the restless energy pools until she can’t stand it anymore. She takes a long walk in the summer heat, humidity pulling at her clothes, the sun baking itself into her hair. She wishes Jamie were there, pointing out dogs and laughing at kids. 

Sweat soaks into her clothes, and she heads straight for a shower upon returning home. Her eyes fixate on the towel, the clean pajamas piled on the counter, the row of neat bottles on the shower rack. She lets the water heat until the room is bathed in steam, and then, only then, does she turn to the mirror. 

Blonde hair, serious frown, one blue eye, one brown, staring back at her. What Jamie sees whenever she joins Dani at the mirror, and nothing else. Nothing more. She leans her weight on her elbows, staring her own reflection down. She keeps expecting something to jump out at her--a perfectly smooth face, dark hair stringy around a white nightgown--but, no. 

_Here’s Dani Clayton_ , she thinks with a rebellious little laugh. _She’s a bit of a weirdo, but she’s a lot stronger than she thinks._

Jamie knew her so well, even then. Jamie, seeing straight to the heart of the matter without even being asked to look. Jamie has always been so good that way, so capable of reading Dani at the most unexpected moments. Eddie wasn’t like that. Eddie’s mother, her own mother, her old friends--they were all missing whatever critical piece Jamie’s puzzle contains. The one that lets a person look and actually _see_ : not what is wanted, but what is _there_. 

She steps under the spray, shivering a little at the heat on clammy skin, and thinks, _Maybe someday. Maybe someday I’ll take cold showers in July, because it won’t be a matter of fogging up the mirror before I’m safe being naked and alone. Maybe someday._

It’s more than she’s allowed herself to hope in years. Maybe she’s crazy even to think it; maybe it’s just testing the gods, the universe, the beast in the jungle. _Here kitty kitty, come out and see if you can take a bite._

She presses her forehead to the tile wall, swaying a little, wishing Jamie were here. Wishing Jamie were sliding back the curtain, stepping into the tub, too giddy at the idea of seeing her even to wait the half hour for her to leave the bathroom. 

She wishes, and still, when hands slide around her from behind, it’s all she can do not to break Jamie’s nose with a terrified headbutt.

“Fuck,” Jamie gasps, ducking aside in the nick of time. “All right, Poppins, fair enough. Guessing you didn’t hear my merry hellos.”

Her heart is a ricochet, bounding around her ribs in time with her gasping breaths. The hands _are_ Jamie’s--Jamie in a black t-shirt with the sleeves rolled, Jamie in shorts and a somewhat embarrassed expression--but for a moment, Dani was back at the sink in the Bly kitchen, feeling the starbursts of lust and newly-born excitement come up against the guilt of phantom gloves. 

“Next time,” Jamie says, “I will yodel.”

“Next time,” Dani agrees breathlessly, leaning back into her arms and trying not to cry and laugh at the same time as she returns to earth. “You are--”

“Home early,” Jamie supplies, kissing the curve of her shoulder. “Couldn’t stand another minute of those buttoned-up stiffs. You know how long they talked about tax benefits and profit margins? Hardly any of ‘em had touched real soil in years, I’d wager.”

“You are fully dressed,” Dani points out. Jamie pauses, looking down at herself in a dripping shirt and shorts that are going to be nearly impossible to wriggle free of. The car keys are still in her hip pocket. She reaches down, flings them out toward the counter. 

“Right. Didn’t think this through.”

Dani laughs, a mouthful of water nearly choking her, and leans her head back to nuzzle into Jamie’s neck. “You’re wonderful. And a mess.”

“Well,” Jamie says slyly. “If I’m already wet, I mean...what’s to be done, but lean into it?”

Dani can’t fault her this logic, and suddenly the laughter is turning into a very different sort of sound as one hand splays across her belly, the other easing sopping hair aside to kiss her neck with deliberate care. She lets herself lean back, the heat and the pressure of the water creating a perfect little pocket far away from the world. When Jamie cups between her legs, hips rocking gently against her from behind as she builds slow friction with nimble fingers, she wonders if maybe she’s dreaming. If maybe the strength of will has peaked and allowed the dream to spill over into reality. 

Or else maybe she’s summoned Jamie, summoned her with that restless desperate need she never quite understood before Jamie walked into her life. Either way, she presses a hand flat against the tile, breathing in steam, the world around her reducing to Jamie’s hands, Jamie sucking a soft red mark into the curve of her neck, Jamie breathing heavily against her ear, _I love you, I’m home, Dani, I’m here._

After, she lathers shampoo into her hands and washes Dani’s hair, talking merrily of foolish conventions and more foolish old men, and Dani thinks she’s never been so relaxed in her entire life. Even with the water shut off and a towel around her body, watching Jamie struggle to peel out of dripping layers, she feels _good_. Her eyes dart to the mirror only once, in time to watch Jamie’s swearing reflection hop in a circle as she fails to remove a sock and nearly topples over. 

There is only her. Only her, and Jamie, and this life she would kill to keep. 

***

The weeks become months, the months become years, and the Lady--the Lady is a memory more than anything else. Dani _thinks_ she’s still in there, somewhere. Thinks this kind of ghost requires a kind of exorcism she doesn’t know how to perform. That maybe the invitation was different enough to ensure no take-backs, no pushing her back out again into that cold night and locking the door behind her. 

But she also thinks maybe Jamie was right, sitting on their bed that night with nervous hope in her eyes. Maybe an invitation, once made, can at least be amended. Maybe an unerring will, when contested with equal strength, can be placated. 

The sex ebbs and flows, as it will, but Dani finds her need for Jamie never diminishes. She never feels as though her day is complete unless she’s held Jamie’s hand, counting the callouses beneath her fingers, feeling the warmth beneath the swipe of her thumb. Some days, they spend hours on the couch, Dani wrapped around Jamie like a human blanket, talking and dozing and laughing, and Dani thinks, _I almost missed this. I almost got too lost to know it._

There are still bad days. Days where she looks furtively into standing water and thinks maybe she sees a shadow, an inkling, a seed. On those days, she walks straight to Jamie, and Jamie--who has always seen only her, who knows her so well she could tell their whole story without Dani’s help--holds her close. Rains kisses up and down her skin, grasps her face between hands that have her memorized, looks her in the eyes. 

“Still here, Poppins. Still here.”

“Yes,” she gasps on those days, and feels herself solidify a little more. She’s older now than she ever thought she’d get to see. Older, and maybe not as much of it shows on her face--Jamie’s getting these surprisingly-sexy lines around her mouth and eyes, a little more each year, and Dani can’t kiss them enough, can’t wind her hands hard enough into silver-threaded hair--but she feels it. Feels the years curling up upon themselves like the rings of a tree. Feels a little steadier, with every one she puts behind her, like an admonishment of cruel gods. _Still here_ , she thinks with a savage kind of pride. _Still here, and still here, and still her. Dani Clayton. Bit of a weirdo, stronger than she thinks, and so fucking in love with Jamie I could burst._

“Do you think we’ll ever manage it?” Jamie asks one day, the pair of them lazy in bed though the Saturday sun has been brightening the room for hours. Dani’s head rests on her chest, Dani’s fingers playing with the waistband of her underwear. It’s a good day, a good, simple morning. Nothing pressing on the horizon. They could stay here all day. 

“Manage what?” she asks, when Jamie gives her a gentle shake as if to say _wake up and pay attention to me._ Her hand sneaks down a little lower, toying with soft skin. Jamie inhales slowly. 

“You are a menace. Do you think we’re ever going to be rid of her? Your beast in the jungle?”

Dani traces tiny shapes into Jamie’s skin, watching her hand disappear under cotton, watching the way Jamie’s hips jump a little when she scratches gentle circles and triangles and flower petals with blunt nails. “I don’t know.”

“You still see her?” Jamie’s lip is between her teeth, her eyes fluttering as Dani presses herself against her thigh and grinds gently. Not in a rush. Just meandering along, enjoying herself, enjoying the way Jamie still feels so alive under her hands. 

“Sometimes,” she admits. It doesn’t scare her the way it used to. It’s different now. It’s there, and it’s frustrating, but it doesn’t feel like something rising from the depths to pull her under. It feels, almost, as though after so many years of fighting Dani’s hunger for life, for Jamie, the beast, too, is tired. 

“But you’re--” Jamie swallows, a low moan passing her lips as Dani finally touches her properly. Slow, languid, she slides her fingers in and cherishes the way Jamie moves to accommodate and accept. 

“I’m what?”

“Happy,” Jamie groans. “With me. With us. You’re happy?”

Dani rolls over, watching Jamie’s brow crease with the loss of her hand. She smiles, sliding down the bed, kissing breast, belly, mapping all the little lines and scars and markers of a life lived well with her tongue. 

“Happy,” she agrees. “Very.”

There are rings on their fingers now, as she reaches up Jamie’s body without looking to tangle their hands. Rings that meant something when she bought them, meant more when they signed a piece of paper, will finally mean the same to everyone else when they stand up in front of friends and family in a few months and repeat those vows. There are rings, and there is laughter, and there are conversations in the dark and tears on a Wednesday and bad coffee and ghosts. Always ghosts. 

Maybe some things can’t be banished completely. Maybe some ghosts are more solid than others. 

As Jamie moves beneath her, coming apart under her lips, she thinks that part doesn’t matter so much. The Lady won’t be taking her. Not this time. 

She wants Jamie--wants this life for as long as she can possibly have it--more than any ghost could want her. If she knows nothing else, with Jamie on her tongue, Jamie’s kiss on her skin, Jamie’s ring on her finger, she can say that much for a certainty. 


End file.
